Anglican Church of Canada puts off Covenant decision – again

Posted on by
1

At its 2010 General Synod, the ACoC decided to keep talking about the Anglican Covenant for another three years and make a decision about whether to accept it or not at its 2013 Synod. Now the Council of General Synod had decided to not decide for another three years: the plan is to continue talking until 2016.

For all practical purposes, the Covenant expired when the Church of England rejected it. Perhaps the ACoC didn’t notice or, more likely, in their never ceasing quest to be relevant, ACoC leaders want to continue prodding the corpse to make quite sure it is dead before moving on to less pressing matters such as the theological, financial, numerical and ethical collapse of their own institution.

From here:

When it meets this July, the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod will not be asked to either accept or reject the proposed Anglican Covenant.

Instead, the governing body will consider a motion that continues the conversation and delays  a final decision on the Covenant until the next General Synod in 2016.

[The Covenant is a set of principles recommended by the 2004 Windsor Report as a way of healing relationships severely damaged by divisions over human sexuality among member provinces of the Anglican Communion.]

At its spring meeting, Council of General Synod (CoGS) agreed to recommend that General Synod ask the Anglican Communion Working Group (ACWG) to “monitor continued developments” around the proposed Covenant. It requests that the ACWG render a report to the spring 2016 meeting of CoGS, and directs CoGS  “to bring a recommendation regarding the adoption of the Covenant” to the next General Synod in 2016.

 

You can't work here, you'll upset the atheists

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

A graphic designer is suing a hotel after claiming he was turned down for a job there because he is a Christian.

Jamie Haxby said he felt ‘victimised and persecuted’ after allegedly being told he could not design adverts for the Essex venue due to his faith.

Mr Haxby, a regular worshipper at his local church, says manager Celie Parker apologised for inviting him to the interview after discovering he was a committed Christian.

He claims he was then told he would not be considered for the role as his beliefs could upset atheists working there.

With rich new veins of material like this, it’s a shame Fawlty Towers is no more.

Unless reduced to penury – a hitherto unlikely scenario, but you never know – I would not want to run a hotel. But if I did, upsetting atheists would be a condition of employment.

Diocese of Niagara: gospels not historical

Posted on by
9

It would appear that for the last 2000 years the gospels have suffered from the misunderstanding that they actually happened. Now at last, thanks to Spong, Borg et al – and a diocesan vision of distributive justice – the truth has come to light: Jesus’ teachings are mystical proclamations of faith completely uncontaminated by historical reality.

From the Niagara Anglican (page 11):

Jesus and his teachings have finally come back to light after being buried under layers of misinterpretation of the gospels as historical fact, rather than as “proclamations of faith” as their Jewish writers intended.

Fred Hiltz visits St. John's Shaughnessy, fails to plant flag

Posted on by
1

In a touching display of anti-triumphalism, Fred Hiltz chose not erect an Anglican Church of Canada victory flag during his recent visit to St. John’s Shaughnessy.

Or perhaps it dawned on him that to win an empty building whose maintenance is draining $20,000 from diocesan coffers every month is a victory that, in the annals of empty victories, makes Pyrrhus look like an amateur.

From here:

As always, the Primate has been busy visiting dioceses across Canada. He highlighted his pastoral visit to three parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster that were returned to the diocese after a legal battle. For three days the Primate visited with people, accompanied by the Very. Rev. Peter Elliott. The Primate brought and blessed an Anglican Church of Canada flag for St. John’s Shaughnessy, but refrained from raising it because he did not want to convey a message of victory over those who had chosen to leave these parishes.

Richard Dawkins reckons a pig is more human than an unborn baby

Posted on by
4

A recent tweet:

Dawkins tweet

By his own lights Dawkins has a point. In a naturalistic interpretation of the universe, pigs and people are simply different arrangements of atoms, molecules and DNA: there is nothing to say one is worth more than another unless the yardstick for measuring worth is complexity, in which case a human would win – but not a foetus.

Again, by Dawkins’ own Darwinian lights, a civilisation that aborts its young is liable to select itself out in the competition to survive. Liberals are industriously aborting themselves into oblivion, leaving Roman Catholics, Muslims and the Third World as a fitting epitaph to the anti-civilisation that Dawkins is helping create.

It’s just as well that Dawkins is wrong: a human from the time of conception is made in the image of God and is of infinitely more value than a pig. Even Richard Dawkins was made in God’s image – hard to believe, I know.

Just in time for Easter: a book claiming that Jesus was a shape-shifter

Posted on by
1

Not only that: Pontius Pilate attended the Last Supper and generously offered his own son as a sacrifice instead of Jesus. It will also come as no surprise that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss to forestall his shifting his appearance into someone else – John Cleese, for example.

The contortions to which people are prepared to subject themselves in order to avoid the straightforward truth of the Gospel never cease to amaze. In this case, the perpetrator of this anfractuous lucubration is an emeritus professor of the History of Christianity, whose only excuse must be  that his prolonged study of Gnosis and Western Esotericism has fatally eroded the natural resistance to gullibility with which the Creator endowed the rest of us at birth.

Perhaps I am being too hard on the good professor, since he was only the translator of the 1200 year old manuscript that makes these claims; nevertheless, he does seem to have a predilection for disseminating material that is patently absurd in its attempt to muddle Christianity.

From here:

A 1,200-year-old Egyptian manuscript tells the story of the crucifixion with incredible plot twists – including the revelation that Jesus could change shape.

The ancient illuminated text’s claim explains why Judas used a kiss to betray Jesus, since the Christian Messiah had the ability to transform his appearance.

It also claims Jesus in fact spent his last supper with the man who ordered his execution, Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who is said to have offered to sacrifice his own son in Jesus’ place.

And it defies the official Easter timeline by putting the day of Jesus’ arrest on Tuesday evening, rather than the canonically agreed Thursday.

The translation from the original Coptic has been revealed for the first time in a new book by Roelof van den Broek, emeritus professor of the History of Christianity at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

In the commonly-accepted Bible story it is claimed that the apostle Judas agrees to betray Jesus in exchange for cash, then kissed him to reveal his identity.

The newly-deciphered text explains that, far from a sign of affection or guilt, the kiss was Judas’ way of forestalling any shapeshifting confusion.

Canada’s never ending quest for significance quenched once again

Posted on by
3

The National Post, rather than running a headline announcing who the new Pope is, instead proclaimed that a Canadian was not chosen; but he might have been.

Marc Ouellet not selected as Pope, but was a serious contender for the role

In a massive break with tradition, the conclave of cardinals has chosen a someone from outside Europe Catholic church, but it was not the former bishop of Quebec Marc Ouellet, but instead electing Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio now known as Pope Francis I.

That didn’t mean that Ouellet wasn’t in the running.

Victoria’s Christ Church Cathedral to begin same-sex blessings

Posted on by
42

From here:

The congregation at Victoria’s Christ Church Cathedral voted overwhelmingly last week to allow same-sex blessings in the church, more than a decade after Vancouver-area Anglican churches did the same.

“The Anglican church has been talking about this for more than 30 years,” Rev. Logan McMenamie says.

[….]

McMenamie laments the parish members he has lost because of the slow changes, but said more progress will be made at upcoming diocese gatherings.

Don’t worry about the members you have lost, Rev. Logan McMenamie. Now you are offering same-sex blessings, rejoice in the prospect of the hitherto reluctant hordes that will soon queue outside your doors every Sunday, eager to worship before the altar of your equality deities.

Then again, it may work out more like those who have gone before you in pioneering compulsive inclusion – like the Dioceses of New Westminster and Niagara: you could find yourself scrambling to close dozens of empty churches every year.